Students use primary resources to examine the context the writings of Mark Twain. They criticize the resources for reliability, accuracy, perspective, relevancy, and authoritativeness.

Ninth graders read a review three pieces of literature. They then compare and relate each piece to the time period in which they were written. Next, they consult different resources and explain how these sources are similar and different...

Students design a discussion tool to facilitate class brainstorming of solutions to dilemmas and difficult situations. They write situations that they imagine or may have faced that could be resolved in a variety of ways. Students orally...

Use photography as a tool to improve writing skills. Provide pupil pairs with a digital camera and challenge them to capture images of the classroom they find visually striking. Each class member then composes a descriptive piece about...

A story that captured the entire nation's imagination, Gone With the Wind portrays the struggle of the Civil War from the perspective of the South. Do you remember some of the details? Test your understanding and that of your pupils with...

Use the dystopian novel After by Francine Prose to spark discussion about individual and student rights. Learners read the novel, evaluating how far a school can go to control its attendees. As they read, scholars...

A geographic perspective helps historians learn about significant eras such as the civil rights movement. Through research and source analysis, learners create a report depicting a significant location of this time. They synthesize their...

Here's an alternative to a traditional book report for your class to demonstrate that they understand and can articulate the main character's evolution and the social themes presented in Voltaire's satirical novel Candide. Your young...

Students investigate the importance of food surpluses to the historical development of urban ecosystems.

Chris Van Allsburg's Two Bad Ants provides third graders with an opportunity to examine point of view and how the point of view of others may differ from their own.

See how bias operates firsthand. Half of the class reads one article while the other half reads another article on the same event. The obvious differences emerge when the two sides talk about their observations though. Several handouts...

Individuals read a series of passages from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, rank the statements from the least to the most racist or stereotypical, and share their rankings and rationales in small groups before a whole class...

To Kill a Mockingbird, Hunger Games, Brave New World. Welcome to Banned Books Week. As part of a study of censorship and book banning, class members investigate censorship, the purposes of censorship, and First Amendment rights,...

Don't simply proofread ... revise instead! Revising drafts is the topic of the 17th handout in UNC's Writing the Paper series of 24 lessons. Writers discover the importance of revision, as well as steps to follow during the process.

Give me a clue. Scholars work in triads to use highlighters and mark clues that lead to the author's point of view in World without Fish. The Author’s Point of View graphic organizer helps them map out their thoughts.

Help young readers find, identify, and use their voices with a set of empowering activities based on Peter H. Reynolds' trilogy of books. Sky Color, Ish, and The Dot focus on recognizing moods and treating each other...

Using M.C. Escher's Hand with Reflecting Sphere as inspiration, learners create their own set of self-portraits using various reflective surfaces. The lesson begins with a discussion about portraiture and ends with a presentation of work...

Women's voices are becoming more prominent in the world of literature, but for centuries, this wasn't the case. Young historians research a woman whose writings are considered to be lost, out of print, or forgotten. They develop an oral...

Work with your department or on your own to create organized unit plans that connect to all parts of the Common Core standards. The three-page template includes space to summarize the unit, list standards for each category of the ELA...

Learning to create depth when painting or drawing takes skill and the ability to understand how things should be placed on the canvas. The class will use the Charles Deas painting Long Jakes to learn about composition, sharing...

What makes a source primary or secondary? Middle schoolers read a definition of each term before exploring different examples and applying their knowledge to a research project.

An activity work alongside a narrative text of your choice. With reading comprehension at its focus, readers complete worksheets covering character descriptions.

The final lesson in the "What Makes Democracy Work?" series examines the connections between imagination, literature, and democracy. Class members listen to a podcast, read an excerpt from Azar Nafisi's, The Republic of Imagination, and...

How do authors convey their points of view? Using the resource, scholars read an excerpt from a primary source document about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Then, they complete graphic organizers to analyze the author's point of view.